Twitter fights trolls; Oculus cuts prices; McDonald’s to add tech

Chronicle Staff and News Services

Updated
4:52 pm PST, Wednesday, March 1, 2017

Having an egg-free Twitter

Twitter is adding more tools to curb abuse on its service, even giving people the option to skip the eggs. The San Francisco company said users can filter the notifications they get when someone mentions them — for example, filtering out accounts without a profile photo, often called “eggs” for the default icon. Twitter also said it will try to flag abusive accounts on its own, rather than waiting for people to complain. Once it identifies accounts that repeatedly engage in abusive behavior, Twitter will place temporary restrictions on them. For example, their tweets will be visible only to followers or others who deliberately search them out.

A Rift in price

You won’t need goggles to see a price cut at Oculus. The Facebook division is cutting the price of its flagship Oculus Rift headset to $499 from $599, as well as lowering the price of the Oculus Touch system, a pair of motion-sensing controllers, to $99 from $199. So far, high prices have limited the adoption of the virtual reality system mostly to video game players. Just over 350,000 Rifts were sold in 2016, according to SuperData Research estimates. That’s less than rival products from HTC and Sony.

Can McDonald’s

curb your unenthusiasm?

McDonald’s acknowledged Wednesday that it has lost 500 million customer transactions in the U.S. since 2012, and laid out plans to get more people back into its restaurants — including by letting them order and pay on their mobile phones and have curbside pickup at many spots by the end of the year.